Photographer Michael Wolf spent 30 days in a Tokyo train station to capture the few faces of the 8 million commuters moving in and out of the trains between 7.45 and 8.45 AM every morning. Entitled “Tokyo Compression,” each photograph was taken at one of the Odakyu Line stations in Tokyo, where every 80 seconds a new trains stops and commuters are pushed againts the window.

Spending 30 days 2 inches away from the train windows, Wolf didn’t make the commuters feel any more cheerful. In fact, nobody was pleased with his presence since he made them aware of the horrible situation they are in and they were ashamed of it. It is the downside of mega metropolitan cities. It’s a horrible situation in which commuters are breathing other people’s sweat and perfume, being squashed against the next person, and the worst part is: it is all man made.

The book presented by Wolf contains portraits of Japanese people inside the crowded train who has been pressed againts a window. The expressions given by the commuters were characterized as tramatised and woeful. Wolf adds that some people shut their eyes or hid their face with their hands when realized their picture was being taken by Wolf, but the truth was they couldn’t move, shift or even get off the train. It was as if they thought that by closing their eyes, Wolf will go away.

This series made Wolf win the 2009 World Press Photo competition for Daily Life. When published in 2010, Martin Parr, a fellow photographer, selected Tokyo Compression as one of the 30 most influential photobooks published between 2001 and 2010.

Text by Raven Navaro